John Peale Bishop

Who was John Peale Bishop?

John Peale Bishop was an American poet and man of letters.

Bishop was born in Charles Town, West Virginia, to a family from New England, and attended school in Hagerstown, Maryland. When 18, Bishop fell victim to a severe illness and lost his sight for some time. He entered Princeton University in 1913, at age 21, where he became friends with Edmund Wilson and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He graduated from Princeton in 1917 and served with the army for two years in Europe. He was the model for the character Thomas Parke D'Invilliers in Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise.

Upon return to the United States, he wrote poetry, as well as essays and reviews for Vanity Fair in New York City. In 1922 he married Margaret Hutchins, and they soon moved to France where they lived until 1933, punctuated by one stint for Paramount Pictures in New York. While in France they bought the Château de Tressancourt at Orgeval, Seine et Oise, near Paris, where they raised three sons.

In 1933 his family returned to the United States, residing first in Connecticut, then New Orleans, and finally in a house on Cape Cod.